by Various
“We can’t leave him here.”
Marcus snorts. “Wanna bet? He’s slow and arrogant. He’ll get us killed. Or worse.”
Why would Marcus smash the console then wake me up? And if he didn’t destroy it, then who did?
“I remember a few months back someone had a sharp tongue and broken foot.” Tina smiles at Marcus.
He grunts at me. “Come on then. I ain’t waiting though.” He turns toward the stairs that lead to the door.
I look down at my white linen gown. “Where’s my suit? My phone? Access to my bank accounts. At the very least, I need a suit on my back. It was an Armani,” I try to explain.
Marcus slings the rucksack on his shoulders. “Bleeding heck, who is this nut job-”
The lights flicker out.
“Is that the generator?” asks Tina.
Footsteps echo in this distance, clomping along a corridor with methodical rhythm.
“Go,” whispers Marcus.
Tina grabs my arm and helps me along.
I struggle to maintain her pace. My legs burn as I stagger up the stairs. Stumbling blindly in the dark, I stub my toes, but she guides me. Up ahead, a sliver of light indicates the outside world. The door is close. Just a few more agonising steps.
“How far is the nearest hospital?” I ask. “Do you think they’ll be able to cure me?”
Light plays upon Marcus’s features and I catch him rolling his eyes as he pushes the door with his shoulder.
My eyes find it difficult to adjust to daylight.
Tina hands me a facemask. “Don’t touch anything or interact with anyone. The water’s still infected with Schtager’s disease.” She speaks quickly. As my eyes adjust to the brightness I realise she holds a dagger in one hand and makeshift spear in the other. “As if infecting the water wasn’t enough, last year they dropped a gene bomb directly over the city.” Her eyes glance from side to side. “I’ve no doubt your genome’s susceptible.” She looks up with her big green eyes as if expecting some kind of response.
“Huh?” The mumbo jumbo streams over the top of my head.
“Tina, I don’t think he’s been outside for quite some time,” says Marcus. He turns to me. “Basically, don’t drink from the taps and if you see someone who looks sick—run.”
“Run?”
Marcus nods, looks me up and down and smiles. “Or walk… as quickly as you can, in your state.”
Confused, I glance at my surrounds. Sunlight catches the mist lingering in the air leaving an orange hue over the horizon. My eyes begin to focus. It’s not mist but smoke billowing from burnt-out buildings and rubble-strewn streets. Ahead, a gaping hole has been ripped through a skyscraper. Steel cables dangle from exposed floors like entrails.
“The hospital?” My mind focusses on one thing. I can’t die. Not now. I’ve waited so long and if there is any chance of a cure…
“The government’s genetic munitions factory might-”
“What!” Marcus lowers his crossbow and turns to Tina. “You can’t be serious. You’d risk the wrath of The Dragon to help this guy?”
She gazes up at Marcus—a foot taller than she is. “If we can’t help others, we are no better than them. You should know better than anyone what—”
Whirring helicopter blades drown out her tirade. Behind me, there is a crash and splinters of wood ricochet into the back of my naked knees.
“Staggers!” yells Marcus.
A man blocks the doorway to the cryopreservation centre. His face is pale, the whites of his eyes are stained a sickly yellow. He stumbles, making his way through the shattered doorframe, those yellow eyes aimed at us. “Hrp.”
“What?” His voice is even more guttural than mine.
Tina grabs my wrist and pulls me back. “You can’t help him. The disease attacks the frontal lobe. They don’t know what they’re doing, or what they’re saying. They don’t feel. They just hallucinate.”
“Gurblins. Prixies.” He tumbles forward. His knee splits open on a rock and blood spurts across the cracked pavement. “Grp. Snks. You see.” The man claws at his shattered knee, pulling at loose tendons.
My stomach churns. Just as I’m about to hurl, shrill whistling sounds, streaming like a gust of wind through a canyon. Above me, missiles fly towards the helicopter.
“Down!”
Someone pulls me to the ground. My knees buckle as the sky explodes above.
I’m overcome by a chalky stench. Dust smothers my medical gown and legs. I sit up, shaking it off.
Lying on the ground beside me, Marcus grabs my arm. “The government, they’re all for the good of the nation, but rarely the good of the people. The enemy sends bombs, our government sends some back. It’s never ending. They need someone to help them see things clearly. Perhaps see things from a more innocent point of view.” He looks at me intently and then at Tina. “You understand what I’m saying? If you go to the munitions factory, make them see. She could make them see.”
Stupid fool. I wrench my arm free of Marcus’s grip. He rolls over panting.
“Marcus!” Tina’s high-pitch scream resonates between the desolate buildings. Furiously, she shakes dust from her hair and rips out alcohol swabs, cleaning her skin.
“It’s okay,” says Marcus. “It’s just a regular bomb.”
“You sure?” The doubt in her voice evident.
“Just a bomb. We could have died.” What is wrong with these people?
Giddy, I stand to survey the destruction. The diseased man lies amongst the rubble. His elbow is bent at an impossibly obtuse angle, a rivulet of blood trickles from a gash on his temple. “Grp. Goblin,” he mumbles. He rolls onto his side and pummels his fists into the pavement until his knucklebones protrude through the skin. With a bony hand, he reaches out to grasp Marcus’s leg. “Gurblin. Hrp. Kill.”
Marcus shrieks in pain as the man’s bloody fingernails dig into his shin.
Tina lunges, grabs the crossbow from the ground and fires at the diseased man. “Wash it! Clean it out,” she yells at Marcus, pelting him with alcohol swabs and water.
Marcus stares at his leg, eyes wide.
I pull Tina back. “We can’t do anything. We have to get the genetic munitions factory.” Who knows how long I have left before the cancer takes over completely.
“No! We can’t leave Marcus,” she cries.
You want to bet. I snatch the crossbow from her unresisting hands and point it at her.
“What? I don’t…” she stumbles over her words.
“We keep moving.” I still am. I still need to be. Nothing is going to stand in my way.
Marcus looks at her with misty eyes. “The sky is swirling.” He extends an arm and touches the air. “It’s quite quick.” He looks at the crossbow in my hand. “Please.”
“No,” cries Tina. “We’ll find help at The Dragon.”
Marcus shakes his head. “You know what you have to do.”
Tina clasps my arm. “Don’t.”
He’ll hold us up. I’ll never make it to the munitions factory. I take aim.
Tina turns away and starts sobbing.
I discharge the crossbow at close range. My aim is slightly off, but the result is still effective. He falls onto his back, gasps and then gasps no more.
“No!” Tina slumps to her knees.
I grab Marcus’s rucksack. “Come on.”
Tina gets to her feet and grabs her weapons like it’s a reflex action, but the resolve she had in her eyes is no longer there.
We wander down the street and for a few minutes Tina seems to have regained her composure, but soon she starts crying. Her sobs become drawn out, painful wails of grief. She screams Marcus’s name.
I catch a flicker of movement in an adjacent ruin. Just shadows? “You need to be quiet,” I tell her.
It’s too late. An infected person staggers into view. With unsteady gait, it lurches towards us from the ruins.
I continue as fast as I can, but my legs are still unsteady and the g
round is littered with broken concrete. I stumble. My legs don’t seem to find the strength to stand again. A few feet away a diseased woman mumbles in indiscernible tones.
Tina is suddenly by my side. After all she has been through, she still comes back to help me. She drags me to my feet, puts an arm around my waist and pulls me forward.
We put distance between us and the diseased man. A mix of weariness and nausea radiate through me, but Tina won’t let me rest. Shadows grow long as the sun passes its zenith and begins its descent to the horizon. Tina helps me pluck my way through the rubble but she doesn’t speak until we come to the end of the city and start our way up a long hill.
“I know you were just trying to save us, but we could have helped him,” she eventually says.
Was I trying to help? Let her think that, so long as we make it to the munitions factory there is still a chance I will be okay.
“Okay, maybe we couldn’t have helped him.” She obviously takes my lack or response to mean something else. “But…” Her voice trails off. “Did you not have someone? Before you went into the cryo thing. Did you not have anyone in your life to care for?”
“I had a wife and two children.”
Her mouth falls open. “And you left them alone?”
“I was going to die anyway.”
“There are worse things than death,” she says. Her words are as pointed as the spear in her hands.
“I was going to die.” I don’t know why I’m bothering to justify myself but for some reason I need her to understand. “I spent all my life working ridiculous hours, building up my business and what for? I can’t die. Not now.”
She looks at my torso. The medical gown—she probably doesn’t realise what a successful man I am… I was.
“There really is nothing inside there, is there?” she says, her eyes boring a hole into my chest. Turning on her heel, she continues up the hill not waiting for me to catch her up.
When I finally reach the top, there is a sheer drop before me. In the valley below sits the remains of what might have once been a town. Tina perches on a rock, knees pressed close against her body. She stares out at the ruinous landscape as the sun begins to melt into the land.
“There it is.” She points toward the plain below. “The Dragon. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Beautiful? Dragon? There’s rubble and tents surrounded by a razor wire fence—nothing but a desolate hole. Could there really be enough technology in there to save me?
“You see it?” she asks, beaming proudly. “The Dragon? Look for it.”
“You sure you’re not infected and hallucinating?”
She ignores my jibe. “See, the former oval is its body. The rubble from the old defence station curves around like the tail. See how the army tents glisten and shimmer in the fading light, like dragon scales.”
“Huh?” I mutter. She is clearly nuts.
“And the electric gate makes the mouth.”
“Electric? Great. So how do we get in?”
“You really can’t see it?” She sounds so disappointed.
I see ruins. But I also see a chance that they might hold a cure with their genetic research so I just shrug. “How do we get down there?”
“They don’t take kindly to outsiders. It’s likely the gate will be guarded, especially at night. We should wait ’til morning, go back down the hill and wave a white flag as we approach, I guess.”
“You guess.” I’m too tired to argue. “You keep first watch then. I’m shattered.”
She doesn’t object. Instead, she pulls out her knife and spear and looks across the plains at the rubble where I hope to find salvation. I settle down, lying uncomfortably on the stony hillside, slowly drifting into uneasy slumber.
Next thing I know, Tina’s shaking me awake. A dozen infected people are staggering up the hillside. “Can we run past them?” I ask. Even as I say the words, I know it’s futile. “What about the rope?” But there are no trees, no stumps, no large stones to loop a rope around.
She reaches the same conclusion. “I can hold the rope. You climb down.”
“Okay.” The staggers are closing in on us. I’m not going to argue.
She wraps the rope around her midriff. “I think I can take your weight. You need to go now,” she says, glancing back down the hill.
It doesn’t take me long to realise there is no way she can do it. I’m twice her size. She braces herself, heels digging into the soil as I tug on the rope to test its strength. In desperation, I examine the cliff face. Maybe I could climb down. A bad idea. I can barely walk. It hits me with gusto. I am going to die.
“I’ll try again,” she says, gritting her teeth.
I know it’s no use and so does she.
“I can defend you.” She steps forward, her spear thrust forward, shaking slightly.
I turn around looking for a rock or something I could use as a weapon. I’m so close. I can’t die now. But in the soft dusk light there’s nothing to see. Nothing but The Dragon encampment below. A couple of lights flicker on in one of the run-down buildings, the one right next to the gate or the mouth as Tina calls it. Light means people. There might still be a chance.
“You go.” I take the rope from her and wrap it around my waist.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I can’t go on alone again. Please,” she begs in her mousy voice.
“You won’t be alone. There are people in there—go to them.” I secure the rope with a double knot. “Go now—and get me help.”
She passes me the spear. “I’ll be quick.”
I nod as she grabs the rope and disappears over the edge. I can barely feel her weight at all. She really is such a tiny creature. I peer over the edge, but I can’t even see her in the dark.
Fingernails rake my back and I scream out. I turn and thrust the spear into the chest of an infected man. It jams and the creature merely grunts as I try to pull it free. I step backwards, mindful of the cliff behind me. Six of them surround me—all muttering, all staggering in some kind of hallucinogenic state. All crying out for help.
They are like trolls. In the last dregs of daylight, their skin seems blistered and green. “Get away from me, trolls,” I scream. They grumble something back in response but I don’t understand. Sounds seem hazy all of a sudden.
I look around for another weapon, but all I see is a snake wrapped around my stomach. It’s trying to eat me. I wrestle with it, unwrap it from my body and toss it aside. It lashes out at me, so I jump on the villainous serpent and kick it over the edge of the cliff. There’s a tiny voice inside, telling me that the snake was important for some reason. The trolls are moaning and muttering as well.
A wash of orange and crimson lingers along the eastern horizon. The trolls are bleeding, painting the sky with blood. I turn to run but a huge dragon sits in the valley below. Eyes blaze near its massive mouth. Its tail flickers, scales shining bright orange. A ferocious creature. Nothing could tame such a wild beast. The world is becoming hazy, yet I see it so clearly. Finally, everything seems clear.
A mouse. A mouse runs towards the dragon. It scampers quickly. Go little mouse. Go. The dragon opens more eyes—dozens of eyes all scrutinising the little rodent. The dragon’s mouth opens and swallows the poor creature whole.
“No.” As I cry out, a voice inside tells me not to be sad. Maybe the mouse will give the dragon indigestion. Maybe the dragon will see the mouse wriggling inside its stomach and the dragon will fall from the bleeding sky.
Come on foul beast. Let’s fly together. I spread my wings and jump out from the cliff. For a moment, I soar. The two dragons soar together. All dragons can fly, but eventually all dragons will fall.
Christopher Reynaga became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Grande Complication” in Writers of the Future, Vol. XXIX (2013), edited by Dave Wolverton.
Visit his website at www.christopherreynaga.com.
* * *
Novelette: “The G
rande Complication” ••••
Novelette: “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree” ••••
THE GRANDE COMPLICATION
by Christopher Reynaga
First published in Writers of the Future, Vol. XXIX (2013), edited by Dave Wolverton
• • • •
THE MOMENT that the world stopped, Neil was trying to yank his hand free of Miss Dutton’s grip. He would have thrown the suitcase of what little he owned onto the train station steps, but his keeper would have dragged him on without it, even as she warned him, “I’ve slapped many a nine-year-old boy in the mouth, thank you very much.” Instead, Neil swung the heavy suitcase at her ankle and loosed a scream for the death of a world that had taken his home and dragged him alone and frightened into this cold October dawn. Neil howled, but the world howled louder as it ceased with a sound no boy would have ever imagined.
The London air clattered with a jangle like spilled silverware. The windows rattled of a dying engine. The people crowded in Greenwich Station glanced around as if expecting the grey clouds to split open and rain pig’s blood. A startled flock of pigeons burst into the air as the beat of their hearts pulsed arhythmically, then stopped.
Everything stopped. The people stopped mid-stride. The train rolling into the station stopped mid-screech. The birds hung motionless in the air, their feathers splayed out to catch a frozen wind.
A silence followed so profound that, had there been anyone left to witness it, they would have felt the ever-present heart-thrum of the world go out.
Neil was such a boy.
His fingers ached, trapped in Miss Dutton’s grip. He fell silent now, lungs spent. Only the shift of his head gave him away as he gaped at the silent world. At Miss Dutton’s lower lip tucked into a snarl. At the way his suitcase hung in the air when he released the leather grip.